


3 AM Homesick

by GutterBall



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Gen, Grad School AU, cussing and snark, mention of other beloved characters, mention of prior canon character death, the usual
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-16
Updated: 2014-10-16
Packaged: 2018-02-21 11:12:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2466167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GutterBall/pseuds/GutterBall
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>From this prompt:</p><p>
  <i>- it’s 3 am and I’m still in the library studying for finals and I’m losing my grip on reality and I think I just saw a ghost</i>
</p><p>Going back to grad school wasn't all it was cracked up to be, and Raleigh's pretty sure he's too damn old for this study-all-night-because-grad-school thing when something... unexpected... happens. Two somethings unexpected, actually, and he's not sure which he's more surprised about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	3 AM Homesick

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr [here](http://gutterballgt.tumblr.com/post/99975328972) from the list of prompts [here](http://deliverusfromsburb.tumblr.com/post/98395987533/i-understand-that-a-lot-of-people-enjoy-writing).
> 
> I'm posting here because gguy in the comments section very sweetly requested a Halloween fic, if I had one in me, and I had just written this that same night. It's not a Halloween fic, but I'm hoping you'll all get a shiver, anyway.

So maybe going back to college was a bad idea.

Not that working construction was so stimulating that he wanted to go back. Raleigh Becket may never have been an A student, but he wasn’t a moron, either, and when the Dean of Engineering stalks onto your work site and tells you he wants you back in his top-echelon group of elite engineering students working on a hush-hush government project, only a moron would refuse.

Even if it meant going back to fucking grad school. The scene of both his best and worst memories.

Unfortunately, the current iteration had been mostly the worst. He had made exactly one friend… with the dean’s adopted daughter. If Stacker Pentecost embodied the gravitas and stature of his office, Mako Mori was a study in effective opposites.

Ol’ Stacks had the dignity and fortitude of a sepulchre in a three-piece suit, where Mako quietly wore the blue streaks in her hair with her head held high and an “I dare you to marginalize me” look in her dark eyes. Pentecost was as tall and sturdy as one of the buildings Raleigh used to build. Mako was freedom and intelligence and emotion concentrated into a delicate, graceful sculpture.

Raleigh had been instantly captivated, though not in a romantic sense, and Mako had been equally taken with him. Pentecost, of course, was less than pleased. Them becoming study partners went over like a lead balloon, but… well, ol’ Rals had his ways. Even now, he had his ways.

Everything else, though… just the biggest fucking mess.

It looked so promising at first. He’d bumped into Herc Hansen right off. Herc had headed a three-team project back in Raleigh’s first run at grad school, and the big, gruff Aussie greeted him with a smile and a friendly, firm handshake. It was nice to know _someone_ was glad to see him back.

And then Herc introduced him to his son, Chuck. Good God, what an asshole. Somehow, Hansen Junior got the idea that Raleigh was there to subvert his place in The Big Project, and the kid had no intention of letting that happen. Considering Raleigh freely admitted he was something of a Hail Mary throw on fourth and twenty-five with two seconds left on the clock, he found the brat’s attitude and clear insecurity laughable. He couldn’t replace a burnt out lightbulb right now, let alone the wunderkind who had designed the entire freaking internal structure of their joint project practically single-handedly.

Or he _would_ find it laughable, if the prick hadn’t picked a brawl just outside Pentecost’s office that had docked both their “grades”. He knew Stacks wouldn’t actually flunk him — and no one in their right mind would flunk Chuck “engineering god” Hansen — but he had hoped to parlay the promised degree into something better than being a worksite grunt with a pneumatic torque wrench, and bad fictional grades were just as damaging to that chance as bad real grades.

The Russian couple working on the plating schematics seemed… neutral toward him, but the Chinese triplets in charge of sorting out the hydraulics pretty much dismissed him on sight when he flubbed the basketball they’d thrown his way in the cafeteria, dropping his own tray in the process and generally making a huge mess. Apparently, having been a star football player five years before mattered less than nothing to the current star basketball players tearing up the university courts.

Worse, he had completely tanked on his midterms because of all the “extracurricular” work the group was doing on the super-secret project. He wasn’t a kid anymore, and he hadn’t slept well since… well… and he just wasn’t at his best. The generous C- Dr. Geiszler gave him had effectively sidelined him from the best parts of the project.

And from working with Mako, which was proving to be the straw breaking his personal camel’s back.

All of which culminated in him still being in the campus library at — he blearily checked his cell phone — 2:49 AM, working on a problem set due at 9:00 AM. Dr. Gottlieb had graciously informed him that an A on this set would bring his grade from its current abysmal C+ to a less-plebian B.

If he could just _focus...._

But he kept… hearing things.

At first, he thought it was other students moving around between the stacks. Shuffling footsteps. The quiet _swoosh_ of a book being removed from or returned to the shelves. The flutter of turning pages. The creak of the spiral staircase. Even the metallic tap of footsteps going up or down.

Unfortunately, the librarian, Tendo Choi, had kicked everyone out and locked up at 10:00 PM, only allowing Raleigh to stay because they’d played on the same team back in the day. Of course, Tendo had graduated and was now an administrator as well as the head librarian, where Raleigh had dropped out and stagnated after....

None of which mattered. Because Raleigh was alone in the library, but it sure as hell didn’t sound like he was alone in the library.

Eyes bloodshot, he squinted at the darkness outside his little pocket of lamplight and debated whether or not to trust his impression of shadowy movement out there in the stacks. He was so hungry his stomach had long since given up on growling and just sat like a black hole in his belly, he hadn’t had more than a bottle of water since early evening, and his head swam with numbers and equations and postulates.

There was nothing out there. It was just his imagination.

And he totally didn’t hear footsteps coming down the spiral staircase in the darkness off to his right.

And he totally _totally_ didn’t see… a glow? A soft light in the darkness from behind the bookshelf to his right. Behind which were the spiral stairs that kept making all the damn racket he didn’t want to admit to.

The glow was too soft for a flashlight beam. It didn’t illuminate the steps or the top of the stack. It was just… a lighter place in the darkness.

And… it was moving.

Headed for the far edge of the bookshelf. Oh, God… was that… was that a _hand?_ Reaching around the end of the bookshelf, grasping onto the edge? Was the glow getting brighter?

Jesus Christ, was he seeing what he thought he was seeing??

_"Raleigh...."_

Every hair on his entire body stood up as a wash of icewater swamped through him. A strangled noise got stuck in his throat, which was simultaneously as dry as a desert and shrunk down to a pinhole in his sudden terror. His hands clenched on the desk, every muscle in his body as rock-hard as if he was hooked up to an electric current.

That was… that was Yancy’s voice.

_That can’t be Yancy’s voice!_

_"Raleigh, listen to me! You need to—"_

"You’d think your grades would be better if you can sleep sitting up, eyes open, and be studying at the same time."

Something inside him broke, and he cried out, the heartbreak inside him spilling out in vocal form and echoing around the empty — _nearly_ empty — library.

"Jesus, mate, what the fuck??"

Ignoring the very real voice that had broken him, Raleigh leapt to his feet and ran for the edge of the bookshelf. Reason told him Yancy was already gone, that he’d never been there at all. The glow had disappeared the moment a “real” voice intruded. His heart, though… his heart held hope.

 "Ray, what the hell are you doing?"

"Did you see it? Did you hear him?" He clung to the edge of the bookshelf, right where that palely glowing hand had been, and stared wildly off into the darkness, willing it to show him the face he’d been seeing in his dreams and nightmares for five years, five months. "Yance? _Yancy!?_ ”

But the library was silent except for the echo of his own sad call, all the riffling pages and shuffling footsteps and creaky stair noises silenced.

Despair filled him, and his shoulders slumped. He leaned his forehead against the smooth metal of the bookshelf, telling himself his eyes were only burning because he’d been up for damn near twenty-four hours straight.

"Raleigh?"

The softer tone — and his actual name, not the snotty “You’re nothing more than a beer-swilling, pot-bellied construction jock to me, pal” nickname — drew his attention, and he looked up from his misery to see Chuck Hansen looking at him with both wariness and… sympathy? No, concern. Maybe both.

"You alright, then?"

He swallowed hard, gripping the bookshelf as if it was sanity itself. “You didn’t see it, did you?”

As quietly and softly as if he were tending a wounded animal, Chuck answered the question with a question of his own. “See what?”

Sucking in a shuddery breath, he shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just losing my mind.”

"What did you see, Raleigh?" Still that low, gentle tone. It made his obnoxiously Australian accent sound… nice, actually. Approachable instead of punchable. "What did you hear?"

His hands were shaking as he ran them up over his face and through his too-long hair. Yance would’ve given him hell about needing a haircut, but Raleigh was way past giving a shit how he looked.

"My dead brother."

When Chuck had no response for that, Raleigh risked a glance at this, his supposed rival. As if he’d ever been competition. Hell, they didn’t even work on the same aspects of the project, so he wouldn’t have been a threat to the brat even if he wasn’t a wrung-out wreck of a shell who had apparently finally lost what was left of his mind.

Chuck was staring, yes… but the kid didn’t look incredulous. In fact, the kid looked… interested. Was that better or worse?

Didn’t matter. Shaking his head, he went back to the table, avoiding the intruder’s gaze. “Never mind. It’s 3:00 AM, and I haven’t eaten since lunch and I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in damn near six years, so… I think it’s safe to say I’m done for the night.”

_For the rest of my life. What the fuck am I even doing here?_

"What did he say?"

The little strength left to him ran out, and he sank down into his chair on a sigh. Not a chance in hell he’d get this damn problem set finished in time for class tomorrow. His grades were in the tank. He only got along with one, maybe two people on the team. He hadn’t made a single viable contribution to the project, and he’d be lucky to even snag a shitty construction job once Pentecost kicked him out of the program for good this time.

And he was hallucinating his dead brother.

His head in his hands, he shuddered. “He said I had to listen to him. And then he was gone.”

Chuck remained silent, and Raleigh mentally counted the moments until the kid called the psych department to come get him. Instead, after a small, tense eternity, Chuck pulled out a chair, flipped it around, and straddled it to lean his elbows on the desk.

"What are you doing here, Raleigh?"

Peering between his fingers, he braced himself for the pandering, false smile he half-expected someone to give an obviously delusional crazy person. Instead, the kid simply looked… sympathetic. It was a weird look on the usually scowling or smirking features. Not a bad look, but definitely weird.

But it was better than the scowls and smirks. So....

"Problem set for Gottlieb’s class. I’m stuck on the last one and was hoping the quiet would…." He shrugged. "What are _you_ doing here?”

"The same." To his surprise, the kid actually looked… sheepish? "Couldn’t sleep with that damn problem on my mind. Kinda hoped moving the whole operation to a new location would spark something."

He frowned. “So… wait. Is… the door unlocked then?”

That might explain some of the noises—

"Naw. Tendo gave me a keycard after my first semester. I damn near lived here, and he got tired of kicking me out at closing time, so he just let me stay, so long as I locked up afterward."

Huh. Well.

A little quiet fell between them. Unfortunately, the emotional toll of the last few minutes left Raleigh feeling roughly a thousand years old and just plain beaten down, and he hadn’t been so tired since....

"You really didn’t see or hear anything?"

Chuck slowly shook his head, his gaze assessing but not… wary or accusing or judgmental. Or smug. “Not a thing, mate.” The barest hint of a grin — not a smirk, but a real grin — quirked the corner of his mouth, a dimple appearing there and changing the entire look of that freckled, cocky face. “Gotta admit, though… I’m glad I didn’t say what I thought when I first saw you sitting here with the only light on in the whole place.”

He frowned a little. “And what was that?”

And now the kid actually blushed a little and rubbed at the back of his neck, looking sheepish again. And adorable, though wild horses couldn’t drag that admission from him.

"I damn near said ‘Oi, Ray, ya look like you’ve seen a ghost’."

The laughter jumped out of him before he even knew it was coming, and he knew it was little more than a confusing mix of relief and pent-up adrenaline and exhaustion and light-headedness, but damn if it didn’t feel good. He needed it. God, how he needed it.

Thankfully, instead of getting pissed and decking him, Chuck only snickered with him, still looking rueful at his admission but not particularly vexed by it. And when the varying degrees of mirth died down, the kid further surprised him by pulling Raleigh’s scribbled work on the diabolical problem set over and glancing down the page with a practiced eye.

Then, ginger eyebrows rose.

"Damn, Ray."

Strangely enough, the hated nickname didn’t sound smug this time. Maybe it was the fact that Chuck hadn’t made fun of him for probably imagining a ghostly encounter with his dead brother. Maybe it was the brief spurt of laughter between them. Either way, “Ray” didn’t sound like Chuck was reminding him that he was nothing but a glorified tooljockey anymore.

"Take a look at this." The kid dug in his backpack and pulled out his own work, flipping pages to find the right one. With his left hand, he pointed out an equation on Raleigh’s page. With his right, an empty section on his own. "I put this here, and it fixes this whole part. And if we apply Boyle’s Law here—"

He leaned forward, seeing the solution form even without writing it out. “Your piece here explains why this part wasn’t working.” He snatched up his pencil, jotting out notes and equations, now that everything was finally starting to fit together. “Put them together, and we get—”

They figured and scribbled for another ten minutes or so, then sat back in triumph, grinning like fools and one step shy of actually clapping each other on the back.

"That’s bloody brilliant, Ray. Gottlieb won’t know what hit him."

The honest praise from such an unlikely source went through him like fine whiskey, warming all the places that had been frozen through barely a half hour before. “Yeah, well, I was beating my head against the wall until you added that bit about Brownian motion.”

The kid’s grin widened, and it turned out Chuck actually had _two_ adorable dimples. The brat. “We don’t make such a bad team after all.” The grin turned snarky, but still not smug. “Guess I can see why Mako keeps you around, then.”

He rolled his eyes, but didn’t snark back. While he was pleased to have that damn problem set done and over with, he was just too tired for witty banter, and it was damn near four in the morning. If he had any hope of getting up in time to actually turn in their brainchild, he needed to head for his cramped little apartment and conk out the minute his head hit the pillow.

Luckily, he didn’t actually have to articulate the thought and risk saying it all wrong and ruining this minute progress. Before he could blurt something stupid, Chuck eyed his watch and groaned.

"I gotta get some sleep, mate."

"Me, too."

They packed their texts and notebooks away in preparation of leaving, not speaking but not because they were pissed or stewing. It was nice to not be at swords drawn with the kid for the first time.

Maybe this whole college thing wasn’t the constant nightmare he’d been dreading, after all.

"Oi, Ray, can I ask you something?"

He shot the kid a wary look, but Chuck only looked… careful. Like he wasn’t sure if they’d gotten friendly enough over a single problem set for personal queries.

But… what the hell. It was 4:00 AM in an empty library.

"Shoot."

The kid swallowed, shifted from one foot to the other, slung his backpack over one shoulder. “What do you think he wanted you to listen to?”

Raleigh didn’t even pretend not to know what Chuck was asking about. “I dunno.”

A moment’s charged — but not exactly tense — quiet. Then: “You gonna come back and try to find out?”

He swallowed hard, shouldering his own pack and suddenly finding the carpet fascinating. “Hadn’t really thought about it yet.”

But if Yancy was trying to tell him something, he… wanted to hear it. Even if it hurt. Maybe even _especially_ if it hurt. Maybe it’d be like lancing a wound to let out all the poison. Sure, that wound would bleed, but maybe it would finally heal cleanly.

Suddenly, a folded-over piece of paper blocked his view of his shoes, and he glanced up to see Chuck eyeing him with that same careful interest from before. Raleigh raised his eyebrows.

"If you do, and if he feels like talking… gimme a call?" That blush. It darkened the freckles and made the kid look about ten years old, but… yup. Adorable. "No one should have to meet their dead brother alone."

He felt a genuine smile quirking his face and reached out to take the offered paper. One problem set might not have made them friends, but he was pretty sure that offer just had.

"Will do." He waved the paper a bit before folding it again and stuffing it in his pocket. "Thanks, Chuck."

"No worries, Ray."

And after they left, whatever walked the campus library walked alone.

For now.


End file.
